Some random (?) facts

"The Phrygians had an equipment very like that of the Paphlagonians with some slight difference. Now the Phrygians, as the Macedonians say, used to be called Brigians during the time that they were natives of Europe and dwelt with the Macedonians; but after they had changed into Asia, with their country they changed also their name and were called Phrygians. The Armenians were armed just like the Phrygians, being settlers from the Phrygians. Of these two together the commander was Artochmes, who was married to a daughter of Dareios." Herodotus, vii, 73

"Phrygia is the Greek name of an ancient state in western-central Anatolia (modern Turkey), extending from the Eskishehir area east to (perhaps) Bogazköy and Alishar Hüyük within the Halys River bend. The Assyrians, a powerful state in northern Mesopotamia to the south, called the state Mushki; what its own people called it is unknown. We know from their inscriptions that the Phrygians spoke an Indo-European language. Judging from historical records supported by ceramic evidence, settlers migrating from the Balkans in Europe first settled here a hundred or more years following the destruction of the Hittite empire (ca. 1200 BC)." The Metropolitan Museum of Art: 'Phrygia, Gordion, and King Midas in the Late Eighth Century B.C.'

"There is evidence that in ancient times a distinct subfamily of Indo-European languages existed that is now called Thraco-Phrygian. To it belonged Phrygian (an ancient and now extinct Indo-European language of Anatolia) and Thracian (a now dead Indo-European tongue of the Balkans in antiquity). Modern Armenian may well be a direct descendant of Phrygian." The Columbia Encyclopedia: 'Armenian language'

"All the unrooted trees agree that there are four supergroups of IE languages (Balto-Slavonic, Romano-Germano-Celtic, Armenian-Greek, and Indo-Iranian)" Rexova K. (2003) Cladistic analysis of languages: Indo-European classification based on lexicostatistical data, Cladistics 19(2)

Interpolated map of haplogroup J2a frequency. Extracted from Sengupta et al. (in press).



Ancient Phrygia, map extracted from Ancient Anatolia web site.